Secret Valentine
by imperfectcadenza
Summary: It's Valentine's Day, which means people get objects chucked at their heads and Sherlock discovers he doesn't hate love as much as he thought. Shamelessly fluffy; a V-Day treat for all who are kind enough to read what I write. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

February, I've missed you.

The world around me is cold and bright, blurred by the rain, and it all has an irreplaceable clarity. The trees are stark and bare.

However, this being my first February living with John, I realise now that not everybody feels the same way. To John, February is warm and cuddly. February is huge knitted jumpers and cocoa. February is...

_Valentine's Day._

"Did you leave anything for the poor man at the counter, or did you buy the entire newsagent?" I remark as I pass by the kitchen table.

John rolls his eyes and squints down at the card he's holding. He's turned the table into a craft station; it's littered with at least a hundred heart-shaped cards. He's already given fifty to various friends of his; I had to stop him when he started writing one to Moriarty.

"How can you hate something like Valentine's Day?" he calls while I hang up my coat.

I laugh. "Easy. It's the worst day of the year. People get so _sentimental_."

"Nothing wrong with that!" he replies. "Oh, bother. The ink just went everywhere."

Walking back into the sitting room, I see him standing by the table with bright red ink patches blossoming on his jumper, and I cackle. He looks like a murder victim.

"How about this one?" I begin, throwing him a tea towel. "Valentine's Day is a stab to the heart, I hope that the two of us shan't ever part."

"Shut up, Sherlock," he replies, and the towel hits him in the face.

* * *

"What should I put on Anderson's?" John calls.

I fake a long yawn. It's 12:08am and officially Valentine's Day. I would try to sleep but he refuses to turn off the radio. The station is currently blasting _Love Is All Around_, and I'm trying extremely hard to resist shooting it in the speakers.

"Put 'You're sleeping with Donovan. You big slut, good for you!'" I reply, and he chucks a felt pen at my head.

I lean over him and read the card aloud. "'You're a real sweetheart!'?" I shout. "No he's not!"

"It's called poetic license, Sherlock," John retorts, folding it delicately and putting it in an envelope. "Go to sleep already."

"Turn the bloody radio off!" I moan.

* * *

"_CHEER UP SLEEEEPY JEEEAAA – _"

*BANG!*

"...Sherlock, what happened to the radio?"

"John, it's _four in the morning._"

"...It's the Monkees!...You are _so_ not getting a card."

"I'm going to sleep now."

* * *

Needless to say, I'm still wide awake when the sun crawls up over the horizon. John went to bed hours ago, still mumbling people he should really make cards for, but sleep's never been a particularly reliable friend of mine. I lie in bed, gripping my pillow, and as soon as I hear the alarm go off I jump up and get dressed.

Glancing out the window, I see the silver rain and black branches I know and love, but something tells me that today isn't going to be cold and stark. Today is going to be warm and fuzzy, and I'll just have to deal with it.

John's stumbling around the kitchen, still in his pyjamas, and when I call out "Sleep well?" he doesn't meet my eyes. He _just_ misses the cereal bowl and ends up with cornflakes all over his feet.

_He's hiding something_, I infer. _He doesn't want to give anything away, and it must be quite important if he's this distracted. Jesus, what did he do after I went to bed; kill somebody?_

I almost ask him, but he goes and gets ready and soon it's time to head down to Scotland Yard to work on the Tyler case. Hopefully it'll be a calm day, with scientific observation and lots of logic and reasoning. My favourite.

Then I see the massive carrier bag he's hauling out the door, filled to the brim with envelopes and heart-shaped cards, and I realise that the sentimentality is far from over.


	2. Chapter 2

Had I known there was a decorating committee, I definitely would not have put Molly in charge.

The whole lab is strewn with red and pink banners, _All You Need Is Love_ is blaring from the speakers in the background, and everything smells like roses.

"Everybody swap cards!" Lestrade bellows, and the relatively calm lab instantly becomes a frenzy.

I grimace and sit at my desk as my colleagues bustle around, chucking cards on each other's workbenches with huge happy grins. After a few seconds, I close my eyes.

When I open them again, there's a pile of cards on the table in front of me, and everyone's thanking each other. I pick them up and begin to read out: "Hmm...'Get a boyfriend, monkey features', definitely Donovan, 'I hate you and you take too many drugs', thank you very much, Anderson, 'To the best consulting detective in the whole world xoxoxoxo', that's your handwriting Molly, I'm flattered..." I pick up a novelty card, squinting at the bright colours. "'You're a bear-y great friend'? Lestrade, that's not even funny." He rolls his eyes at me, and I throw the card at him.

"'You make everyone in the lab happy! Don't ever change'," reads Molly, and she smiles. "Oh, John, thank you," she says, putting down his card, and walks over to him and kisses him on the cheek. Kisses John Watson. In plain sight.

I watch in surprise as he smiles back at her and she whispers something in his ear. He nods and glances at me nervously.

_John and Molly?_

To be honest, I'd be less surprised if Anderson got up and hugged me.

* * *

It's around noon when I first notice the card.

Lying on my desk, it's the plainest thing I've seen all day. I pick it up and read it.

_You're an idiot, and I love you._

I turn it over in my hands, searching for any possible clue as to who wrote it. No signature, no idiosyncrasy, nothing. Just seven words in Georgia type, right in the middle of a blank white card.

A smile works its way onto my face as I realise that this is just another case to crack. A puzzle to solve.

But still. Those last three words.

I don't hear them often.

* * *

The first person I ask is Anderson, just to rule someone out. He just calls me a poofter and goes back to playing Robot Unicorn Attack. Donovan does the same, but she's pretending to be 23 on Omegle. How classy. I would ask John, but he said I wasn't getting a card and I trust him.

It takes me half an hour to work my way around the whole of Scotland Yard, and half an hour to get no answers.

There's one interesting thing, though; when I ask Molly if she wrote the card, she truthfully says no. But her eyes lack the curiosity and confusion that all the others' do. She may not have written it, but she knows who did.

I'd ask her if I thought she'd ever tell me.

* * *

By lunchtime, I'm starting to go insane.

"There has to be an answer to this!" I say, turning the card back and forth in my hands, much to the amusement of my co-workers. "Think, Sherlock, think. _You're an idiot and I love you._ Somebody in this room wrote me a card, and yet none of you did it!"

Anderson sniggers.

Molly coughs and says quietly, "Well, Sherlock, there is, erm, one person you haven't considered might have been lying." She lifts a finger and points behind me.

With a frustrated sigh, I turn around. John stands by the wall, making the coffee. He always makes me coffee. And he always does the shopping, and comes to my cases even at three in the morning, and stays up all night to help me, even though he tells me I'm an id –

Hold on.

I read the card once more.

_You're an idiot, and I love you._

I look back up at John, who's tracing his fingertip over the rim of my coffee cup with a look at the floor that's half dreamy and half nervous.

Oh my God.


	3. Chapter 3

My first thought is _No. That's not possible. He means it as a friend, doesn't he?_ The entire lab is glancing at me even as they talk amongst themselves. The look on my face must be priceless. Lestrade is open-mouthed with shock; Molly's indication has stunned him too.

My second thought, as I watch John's fingers move, is that I could analyse the hell out of that coffee cup. I could inspect his pulse and the dilation of his pupils, pay more attention to how much hair product he uses, do a complete scan of his inbox. I could deduce how he feels about me in an instant, if I took it as a matter of importance. The evidence would be effortless to find if it was there.

But I realise something as I take a tentative step towards him. Some things you just know. Some things are too precious, too improbable, to allow any trace of evidence. Some things in life are warm and fuzzy and entirely devoid of science. And this is one of them.

He looks up at me and I feel something in my chest, like someone's taken a sparkler and a butterfly and put them in my ribcage to fight to the death. It's completely unfamiliar to me. _No. No, no, no, this isn't happening. I don't feel this way about ANYBODY! Especially John._

_Wait, why not John?_

His eyes search mine, and the scientist in me sees all the signs I missed before. _God, how did I not see it? There's always something._

"Coffee?" he says, holding out the cup. I'm paralysed; I can't speak, can't move, can hardly breathe. All I can do is see him.

I take it from his outstretched hand, and a shiver runs up my arm when our fingers touch. This is incredible, the way I'm feeling right now. I'm practically hyperventilating. I feel so silly!

Feeling my muscles unfreeze, I lift the cup, drain it – and throw it across the room.

It hits Anderson in the head, and he goes down cold. As my colleagues crowd around him and a clamour starts, I grab John's hand and, unnoticed, we run out the back door.

* * *

The winter is beautiful outside. Rain has left the branches sparkling; it's just like I'd hoped, but I don't look at the trees or the silver sky. I look at John.

How did I not notice him before? How did I miss the prettiness of his eyes, the curve of his frown, his cute little ears? How could I have been so spectacularly _unobservant?_

I gaze at him and realise something else. Initiating a relationship with John would mean giving up a lot of my privacy. It would eventually mean sex, which is painful and messy and embarrassing – well, that's what I've overheard from Anderson. _And what if he takes my skull again? Mrs Hudson only just gave it back! _He stands before me, fuming, and I realise that I don't care. Sacrifices have to be made for love.

I smile. Yes, love. That's what it is. I'm in love. I'm cold and nervous and I've never been happier, because I'm looking into the eyes of someone I want to be with for the rest of my life; God, I sound like a terrible pop song. But that's not the point, is it?

_John Watson, I love you and everything about you._

"Sherlock, what the hell did you do that for?" he says. "That was dangerous! He could be seriously – "

"John," I interrupt, "shut up."

He glares at me, his cheeks flushing pink. "Don't tell me to shut up. You can't just go around – "

"John, shut up," I repeat. And I lean forward and kiss him on the mouth.

_What did I do that for?_ I think. _Who says it was even him? Who says he's serious about this?_ He's perfectly still. My chest is aching with fear. But then he sighs, the lines of his forehead crinkling, and his arms wrap around my waist. It takes me a few seconds to realise that we're kissing, we're actually kissing, and this is ridiculous. But I like it.

After a few seconds, John pulls away. His pupils are dilated, there's a flush on his cheeks, he's breathing quickly, and he is absolutely, positively in love. I wonder what I look like, with my heart rate rising and my smirk threatening to spill into a huge grin. "You can't just go around kissing your friends for no good reason," he stammers.

My brow furrows. "Yes, you're right. Why did I do that?"

He glances at the floor and murmurs, "Because you're an idiot –"

"And, John, I love you," I finish. _Okay, that was even stupider._ His face has gone white, and his eyes are bugging out. _No, I didn't just say that. I've gone and ruined everything._ He swallows and clenches his fists, and then he sprints inside yelling "MOLLYYYY!"

I find myself grinning, and I run after him.

* * *

"Oh, I'm so happy for you!" Molly squeals. She grabs John's hands and they jump up and down for a few seconds, but they stop when they see me. The two of them have huge smiles on their faces.

"It was Molly's idea, really," mumbles John. "She set us up." Molly prods him in the shoulder. "Okay, okay, fine. I asked her how to do it. I guess I just...I dunno, I just thought you'd ignore me."

I step forward. "So you do love me? Really?" I ask, taking his hands.

He smiles at me, ignoring that the whole lab is watching silently, and answers, "Really."

"I don't usually do this...well, I don't ever do this, John," I say. And it's true. When was the last time I trusted somebody with my life, watched their every move, saved them from mortal danger? Since when do I let somebody in?

Since the fourteenth day of February, since today. Since I realised that people like John are few and far between, and that I've always loved him. Since stupid, airy-fairy, sentimental Valentine's Day!

He nods. "I know." And he kisses me again, and everyone gasps and smiles, and Anderson groans with an ice pack pressed to his head. The world outside is cold and bright, the bare trees are blurred by the rain, and everything has an irreplaceable clarity – but John's arms are warm and his lips are soft and that's all I care about at the moment.

This being my first day of knowing that he loves me, I realise now that I feel exactly the same way. The happy sighs around us continue, the rain keeps falling, and the radio plays on.

And this time I don't shoot it through the speakers.


End file.
